Category: News

Ripple has released its Q3 2018 XRP Markets Report, which shows that XRP sales doubled in Q3, largely due to institutional buying.

Total sales of XRP was $163 million up from $73.5 million in Q2. Institutional sales accounted for the majority with $98 million, from only $16 million in Q2. The increase is largely down to the hype and release of the xRapid product.

XRP had traded in a tight correlation with the overall crypto market but was underperforming until the September rally on the xRapid news.

Another interesting chart highlighted the growing importance of South Korea and Malta. The latter surprisingly accounted for, “two-thirds of digital asset trading”. Koreans have increased their trading volumes as the emerging markets have struggled in the global risk sell-off. Although Malta has been a strong supporter of blockchain technology, the European nation only has a GDP of $12bn. A large portion of the volume may be from institutions and startups who have moved to the regulation-friendly island. Malta’s moves to adopt cryptocurrency has seen the country attract the name “Blockchain Island”.

Ripple’s XRP has struggled to see follow-through on xRapid. This is due to the small number of companies that have signed up so far. XRP has consolidated the recent rally but a further advance cannot be ruled out.

Stratis have recently released a roadmap for Q4 which futhers their ambitious plan to build their blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) platform. Smart contracts, full nodes and sidechains are the focus of the Q4 plans.

A further feature in development is Breeze protocol, which is a privacy-enabling feature. The upgrades are scheduled for completion by year-end. The project’s mission has been to target C# developers who want to develop software and services for business.

In another exciting news release Stratis announced that they are now a certified Microsoft partner. The partnership includes access to the Azure cloud marketplace, which the developers noted, “… gives app and service providers access to 120,000 enterprise customers and 800,000 ecosystem partners in 190 countries.”

The certified partner status comes after the ICO platform was made available on the popular cloud platform. This made the Stratis the first Blockchain-Based Web App solution available on the Marketplace.

The Stratis token is up over 10% on the week and currently has a market cap of $150 million with a supply of 99 million tokens.

Coinbase has announced that it will now support the Circle stablecoin USDC. The cryptocurrency exchange announced on a blog post that the coin had begun trading yesterday, the 23rd October. The move is significant as it is the first time Coinbase has shown support for a stablecoin and it also comes only a week after tether had seen a panic spike lower as traders continue to question the legitimacy of the coin’s 1:1 peg. The addition of USDC could be seen as a vote of no confidence in tether. This follows news last week that Binance was expanding its stablecoin offerings to four.

The underlying technology of the USDC coin was actually co-developed by Coinbase and Circle under the CENTRE banner.

The company’s blog stated, “The advantage of a blockchain-based digital dollar like USDC is easier to program with, to send quickly, to use in dApps, and to store locally than traditional bank account-based dollars. That’s why we think of it as an important step towards a more open financial system.”

USDC will also be added to the Coinbase Pro platform in coming weeks. The stablecoin already supported on the Coinbase Wallet, which supports ERC20 tokens.

The move to a stablecoin is a further sign that Coinbase are becoming more aggressive in their listing policy. Competitor exchanges have wider offerings and competition is heating up in th ecryptocurrency space.

Decred has surged over 24% after it was announced that the cryptocurrency would be added to the Binance exchange.

Binance announced the news on Twitter and stated that trading in the coin would begin tomorrow, the 24th October.

It was announced last week that Decred would be handing over its $21 million treasury to investors in a move designed to further decentralize governance. “Politeia” will give holders of the cryptocurrency the opportunity to exercise control over each project. The treasury held DCR 570,000, valued at roughly $21 million. Today’s rally will bring this figure closer to $28 million. The treasury is also funded by a portion of new coins created with each block, so it’s a self-funded system.

(Source: Decred)

DCR now has a market cap of $417 million with a circulating supply of only 8.6 million coins, from a maximum supply of 21 million.

Qtum was higher today in a quiet cryptocurrency market as traders digest the foundation’s AWS deal.

Trading 8% higher in early trading, Qtum slipped to a gain of over 3% on the day. The general market was quiet with only NEM and Tezos showing gains in the top twenty coins by market cap. The Singapore-based Qtum foundation had called the AWS partnership a “ground breaking” deal that sees them provide smart contract technology to the China division of AWS.

Qtum bounced off resistance at the $4.75 level, however a move above that could see the coin almost double in price. The coin currently sits at number 26 in the list of coins with a market cap of $387 million and 89 milion coins in circulation. VeChain currently holds twentieth spot with a market cap of $617 million so it would take gains of 100% in Qtum to move into top twenty.

In a recent article we highlighted the “Coinbase effect” that led to a 30% rally in 0x after it was officially listed on the cryptocurrency exchange.

The Coinbase rally and the rumour rally that preceded it led to big gains for 0x speculators. We mentioned that 0x was spotted on the exchange’s reporting section days before the coin was announced for Coinbase Pro. The rally seen in 0x has led to another bout of FOMO and the four coins that we noted in our article are all showing gains today.

Coinbase had previously mentioned that they were exploring the possibility of five coins. These coins were: Stellar Lumens (XLM), Basic Attention Token (BAT), Cardano (ADA), ZCash (ZEC) and of course, 0x (ZRX). The four remaining coins are likely seeing gains from speculative buyers who are hoping to predict the next listing rally.

Coinbase has recently adopted a new listings policy, which allows project founders to complete an application form to be considered for a potential listing. The move came following criticisms over the previous selection policy, requests from users that they wanted more coins to trade, and more importantly to catch up to the growing competition from rival exchanges. With a new improved listings policy and a lofty valuation to keep up with, you can expect to see another coin listed more quickly than they have in the past.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Krug stated that he saw, “solving scalability” as the key issue that’s currently holding many investors back from investing in the space. He also said that although Bitcoin will likely never get there, he expects to see blockchains that are, “faster than Visa or Mastercard in a couple of years”. Solving the scalabilty issue is a key investment theme for Pantera would be the driver for the 10x growth in crypto over the next two years according to Krug.

Pantera were founded in 2013 as the first U.S. blockchain investment firm and the company are “one of the largest institutional owners” of cryptocurrencies, according to their website.

Qtum has announced that they are partnering with Amazon Web Services (AWS) in a “ground-breaking” deal to explore Blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS).

Further details of the tie-up were released on Qtum’s blog. The Singapore-based project will provide smart contract development on AWS. Developers will be able to launch smart contracts via an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). As the platform grows AWS and QTUM will expand their services for developers and customers.

The deal makes Qtum the first open-source blockchain to partner with AWS and the foundation’s CIO Miguel Palencia commented,

Qtum’s launch on the AWS marketplace provides an easy-to-use and powerful cloud-based solution for end users and enterprise. Anyone who wants to develop and build dapps on the Qtum platform or use it as a staking node will benefit from this.

News of the AWS deal has seen a 6.58% gain in Qtum’s price to $3.91 and the coin currently has a market cap of $348 million according to data from coinmarketcap.

Qtum have been given the greenlight by AWS to show their worth in the smart contracts arena. If they do so, further opportunities may lie in wait with the retail giant.

Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs COO and economic advisor to President Trump has announced his next role will be as an advisor with a blockchain startup.

Cohn will be joining Spring Labs, which is building a decentralized network for identity and credit. The company aims to create a “more transparent and secure” financial services industry. Critics were quick to jump on the move by claiming that this was a fall from grace, yet you don’t get to become the COO of Goldman Sachs for 11 years by making dumb and hasty investment decisions.

Cohn served under the Trump administration from January 2017 to April 2018. He left due to economic differences between himself and President Trump. The decision came after Trump announced his plans to impose import tariffs, which started the trade war between the U.S. and China.

Spring Labs has offices in Los Angeles and Chicago. The company raised $15 million without the need for an initial coin offering (ICO). The plan is to work on the network’s architecture before any digital assets are created.

Billionaire cryptocurrency bull Mike Novogratz believes the market will see a rally in Q1-Q2 2019 from institutional buying.

Talking on Bloomberg, Novogratz made his comments on the same day that Fidelity – the fourth-largest asset manager in the world – announced their first concrete plans for institutional cryptocurrency products.

Novogratz highlighted institutional desire for custody products, which Fidelity are aiming to offer and talked about the “credible” names that are now entering the market and boosting investor confidence in the space. The Galaxy Digital investor said that Fidelity should be running by Q1 2019 and once the market “runs some water through the pipes”, the rally will develop through Q2.

Boston-based Fidelity, who currently have $7.2 trillion in assets under management (AUM) have announced that they are setting up a standalone company named Fidelity Digital Assets. The company plan to offer trading and custody services for institutions only, however the move will add further weight to the sector that will ultimately lead to further retail volume.

Mike Novogratz went on to state his thoughts on Bitcoin, where he saw $6,800 as an important level to break to get people excited, with $10,000 being a “big number”. He stated that new highs in Bitcoin were possible in early-2019 if the institutions start getting involved.